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The violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville reflects the dangerous, open-the-floodgates culture that having a Bully-in-Chief in the White House has created in America.
Hundreds of protesters descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017 for a “Unite the Right” rally.
The rally was dispersed by police minutes after its scheduled start at noon, after clashes between rallygoers and counter-protesters, and after a torchlit pre-rally march Friday night descended into violence.
But later that day, as rallygoers began a march and counterprotests continued, a reported Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.
Self-described “pro-white” activist Jason Kessler organized the rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville.
Kessler is affiliated with the alt-right movement that uses internet trolling tactics to argue against diversity and “identity po…

In Dissents, Sonia Sotomayor Takes On the Criminal Justice System

The Supreme Court term had barely gotten underway in early November when Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued her first dissent. A police officer's "rogue conduct," she wrote, had left a man dead thanks to a '''shoot 1st, think later' approach to policing."

Justice Sotomayor would go on to write 8 dissents before the term ended last Monday. Read together, they are a remarkable body of work from an increasingly skeptical student of the criminal justice system, one who has concluded that it is clouded by arrogance and machismo and warped by bad faith and racism.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas wrote more dissents last term, but his agenda was different. Laconic on the bench, prolific on the page and varied in his interests, Justice Thomas is committed to understanding the Constitution as did the men who drafted and adopted it centuries ago.

Justice Sotomayor's concerns are more contemporary and more focused. Her dissents this term came mostly in criminal cases, and were informed as much by events in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 as by those in Philadelphia in 1787.

She dissented again in January, from Justice Antonin Scalia's final majority opinion. Joined by no other member of the court, she said the majority in 3 death penalty cases might have been swayed by the baroque depravity of the crimes.

"The standard adage teaches that hard cases make bad law," she wrote. "I fear that these cases suggest a corollary: Shocking cases make too much law."

9 days after Justice Scalia died in February, on the day the 8 remaining members of the Supreme Court first returned to the bench, Justice Sotomayor laid the groundwork for what would turn out to be her most important dissent of the term.

The question in the case, Utah v. Strieff, No. 14-1373, was whether prosecutors could use evidence obtained by the police after illegal stops. A lawyer for the state told the justices that the Constitution allowed this if there had been an outstanding arrest warrant for the person the officer happened to stop.

There is logic to the position. The warrant existed before the illegal stop. It called for the suspect's arrest. Searching people in the process of arresting them is prudent and constitutional. The contraband the Utah officer found was real. There may be better ways to discourage unlawful stops than by suppressing evidence.

But, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, "the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."

At the argument in February, Justice Sotomayor asked the first 6 questions, ripping into the state's lawyer with a blast of real-world experience rooted in the Black Lives Matter movement.

"What stops us," she asked, "from becoming a police state and just having the police stand on the corner down here and stop every person, ask them for identification, put it through, and, if a warrant comes up, searching them?"

A moment later, she answered her own question.

"If you have a town like Ferguson, where 80 % of the residents have minor traffic warrants out, there may be a very good incentive for just standing on the street corner in Ferguson and asking every citizen, 'Give me your ID, let me see your name.'"

Last month, Justice Thomas, writing for a 5-justice majority, accepted the state's logic.

Justice Sotomayor, a former prosecutor who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, responded with an unusually direct dissent.

"Do not be soothed by the opinion's technical language," she wrote. "This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants - even if you are doing nothing wrong."

"If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay," she continued, "courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant."

In many communities, she said, the tactics the court endorsed will allow the police to search people almost at will.

"It is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny," she wrote.

She cited precedents, naturally. But she also named major works on the African-American experience: W. E. B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk," James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" and Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Between the World and Me."

You might be forgiven for thinking she was suggesting some summer reading for her fellow justices.

3 days later, Justice Sotomayor dissented again, this time from a ruling that said the police do not need warrants to conduct breath tests when they arrest people for drunken driving.

"I fear," she wrote, "that if the court continues down this road, the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement will become nothing more than a suggestion."

Most of the justices, including some of its more liberal members, are inclined to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Justice Sotomayor is more apt to see encounters with the police through the eyes of the powerless, as tinged with humiliation, danger and worse.

"For generations," she wrote in the Utah case, "black and brown parents have given their children 'the talk' - instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger - all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them."

Her 1st dissent of the term arose from an attempt to serve an arrest warrant for a misdemeanor probation violation. Disinclined to be arrested, the subject of the warrant, Israel Leija, instead led the police on a high-speed car chase on an Interstate highway north of Tulia, Tex.

The authorities set up a spike strip to try to disable Mr. Leija's car. But Chadrin L. Mullenix, a Texas state trooper who had earlier that day been told he was not "proactive enough," had a different plan. He positioned himself with a rifle on an overpass.

A superior told Mr. Mullenix to "stand by" and "see if the spikes work first." Mr. Mullenix instead fired 6 shots, killing Mr. Leija. The car then hit the spike strip and rolled over twice.

Mr. Leija's family sued, saying Mr. Mullenix had used excessive force, and an appeals court let the case proceed. The Supreme Court reversed that court's ruling, in an unsigned opinion.

Justice Sotomayor said she was struck by Mr. Mullenix's "glib comment" after he finished shooting Mr. Leija. "How's that for proactive?" Mr. Mullenix asked.

"The comment seems to me revealing of the culture this court's decision supports," she wrote, alone on the court.

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Waves of executions are part of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's hard line on drug convicts. Australians best remember those of Bali Nine leaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, shot by firing squad in 2015 despite all efforts to save them. With more than 200 people on death row, why do anti-death penalty activists now see a ray of hope?
IN A SMALL Christian prayer room at Cilacap jail, on central Java’s south coast, a death-row prisoner talks diffidently about her wedding dress.
The Indonesian migrant worker and convicted drug dealer was once married to an abusive husband but separated long ago after he shunted her off to work in Taiwan.
Merri Utami had planned to wear her new white dress, not to second nuptials, but to her execution by firing squad last year.
She had been preparing to meet Jesus.
According to Indonesian protocol, she would be tied to a stake in a remote jungle clearing on Nusakambangan penal island off the port town of Cilacap, blindfolded and shot dead in t…

WEST PALM BEACH -- In a ruling that could prevent as many as 100 condemned inmates from seeking life sentences, the Florida Supreme Court this week rejected arguments that constitutional flaws with the state’s death penalty should benefit all 362 inmates on death row.
The much anticipated ruling strikes a blow to efforts to block the scheduled Aug. 24 execution of Mark James Asay for the 1987 shooting deaths of two Jacksonville men. It also will make it more difficult for all but one of seven men on death row for decades-old Palm Beach County murders to win life sentences as a result of the legal turmoil roiling the state’s death penalty.
While acknowledging that Asay and others may have other grounds to appeal their death sentences, the ruling is both far-reaching and troubling, said Robert Dunham, a lawyer and executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.
“Now what you have is a situation in which for about 200 cases there may be costly resentencings …

The terrorist group known as ISIS has released pictures of a man being thrown off a roof in Syria.
Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continues to actively target and execute gay men.
This week, the group’s propaganda agency released three pictures of a man being executed for suspected homosexuality.
The pictures were identified as being taken in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, though differing reports identify the location as Damascus.
The first photo shows the man being dangled from the top of a high building by three assailants.
The second pictures shows the man after he has been pushed off the ledge, plunging to his death.
In the third picture, his bloodied body is shown on the ground, as the crowd jeers and pelts him with stones.
Other pictures released by the propaganda agency show the enforcement of horrific brutal practices, including amputating the arm of a thief. Pictures also…

France condemns the execution in Iran, on August 10, of Alireza Tajiki, a minor at the time of the events and at the time of his sentencing, and expresses its concerns about reports of the imminent execution of Mehdi Bohlouli, also sentenced to death when he was a juvenile.
This execution is contrary to the international commitments that Iran itself has signed on to, particularly the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It is also a step backward with respect to the positive developments we have seen on human rights in Iran, most notably the Iranian Parliament’s adoption of a law on August 13 limiting the scope of the death penalty.
France reiterates its unwavering opposition to the death penalty throughout the world and in all circumstances.
It encourages Iran to continue its efforts and to establish a moratorium with a view to its abolition. Source: France Diplomatie, August 16, 2017

Rejecting international norms, Iran speeds the execution of minor offenders
On Tue…

One of the prisoners was 17 when he committed the alleged "crime"
Seven prisoners sentenced to death in Gohar Dasht (Rajaieh Shahr) Prison in Karaj, have been transferred to solitary confinement. These victims are faced with an imminent death threat.
Mehdi Bohlouli, who is now on the verge of execution after serving 15 years of imprisonment, was only 17 when arrested and this is the fourth time he has been transferred to solitary confinement for implementation of the death sentence.
Taking prisoners to the gallows to witness the shocking scene of the execution of other prisoners is a common practice of torture in the prisons of Iranian regime.
Transferring the young prisoner, Mehdi Bohlouli for execution is taking place while the execution of Alireza Tajiki, a young prisoner who was 15 years old at the time of his arrest, sparked a wave of hatred inside and outside of Iran, and international human rights organizations called it shameful and shocking. Alireza Tajiki was hang…

Jakarta: Bali nine drug mule Renae Lawrence is expected to have her jail sentence cut by six months which would see her complete her prison term by the middle of next year.
However it is likely she will serve an additional six months behind bars rather than pay the one billion rupiah ($100,000) fine that accompanied her jail sentence.
The prison governor of Bangli jail, Diding Alfian, told Fairfax Media that Lawrence had been recommended for a six-month remission as part of Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on August 17.
Meanwhile Bali authorities said Australian fugitive Shaun Edward Davidson could have been a free man on Thursday if he had been granted a sentence remission.
Davidson escaped from Kerobokan jail via a waste tunnel in late June with just 10 weeks left of his 12-month jail sentence for using another man's passport.
"He was in for forged documents, we would have recommended him for remission if he behaved," Bali Corrections Chief Surung Pasaribu tol…

A prisoner was reportedly hanged at Shirvan Prison on murder charges. 2 prisoners were reportedly hanged at Zanjan Central Prison on drug related charges.
According to close sources, the executions in Zanjan were carried out on the morning of Tuesday August 8, and the prisoners have been identified as: Hamza Rahimpour and Abbas Sooghi.
"Hamza Rahimpour was arrested and sentenced to death in 2014 on the charge of producing and selling 6 kilograms of crystal meth. Abbas Sooghi was arrested and sentenced to death in 2015 on the charge of four kilograms of opium and heroin," an informed source tells Iran Human Rights.
Iran Human Rights had reported on the imminent execution of these prisoners and urged the international community to take action.
An official Iranian source announced on Monday August 7 the execution of a prisoner at Zanjan Central Prison on murder charges. This brings the total number of prisoners who were reported as executed in Zanjan Prison last week to three. …

NCRI - Two young 20- and 19-year-old prisoners from Afghanistan were sentenced to death in central prison of Zahedan, Southeast Iran, on the charges of armed robbery from a financial institution.
According to reports, they were subjected to intense physical and mental torture in the prison, in order to confess to what they were asked to in front of the television camera.
Hamza Noorzehi, 20, and Amir Noorzehi, 19, were arrested in Zahedan on 28 July 2014.
According to reports, Hamza Noorzehi was working in a quilt shop and Amir Noorzehi was working on the street repairing and waxing shoes when Fereshtegan (Angels) Financial Institute, also known as Arman Institution, was targeted by an armed robbery.
According to their relatives, they had nothing to do with the armed robbery, and they were only working on their daily routine work.
At the time of arrest, Hamza Noorzehi, was 17 and Amir Noorzehi was 16 years old.
The Angels aka Arman financial institution was based in the city of Zahed…

The amendment will apply retroactively, thus commuting the sentences for many of the 5,300 inmates currently on death row for drug trafficking. Under the new bill, the punishment for those already convicted and given the death penalty or life in prison, other than those meeting the new execution requirements, will be commuted to up to 30 years in jail and a cash fine.
Iran’s parliament passed a long-awaited amendment to its drug trafficking laws on Sunday, raising the thresholds that can trigger capital punishment and potentially saving the lives of many on death row.
The bill must still be approved by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council but gained parliamentary approval after months of debate, according to parliament’s website and the ISNA news agency.
According to rights group Amnesty International, Iran was one of the top five executioners in the world in 2016, with most of its hangings related to illicit drugs. The watchdog noted sharp drops in the number of executions in …

I oppose the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner.
The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity.
To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values.
The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.
The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect.
It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class.
It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation.
It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner.
It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it.
Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit blog. It is based in Paris, France.
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